Graciela Iturbide was born into a wealthy conservative Catholic family in Mexico City in 1942. She attended Catholic school which emphasized the county’s Hispanic heritage as opposed to that of Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Iturbide’s interest in exploring the underrepresented native cultures, their daily lives, customs, and rituals, fueled her future work as a photographer.

In 1962, Iturbide married Mexican photographer Pedro Meyer and had three children. In 1969, she decided to enroll at the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónama de México to become a film director. When she took a class with master photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, she began concentrating her interests on photography. Bravo was greatly impressed with Iturbide’s talent and invited her to be his assistant. She worked closely with Bravo from 1970 to 1971 and was deeply influenced by his poetic style, however, Iturbide wanted to focus her efforts on what she described as “photo essays” as opposed to individual photographs as works of art.

Iturbide traveled to Europe where she met internationally renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose notion of the “decisive moment” (the creative moment when the photographer decides to capture a photograph) greatly influenced her work. She returned to Mexico where she spent the 1970s working for the Instituto Naciola Indenista documenting indigenous cultures throughout the country.

She began publishing her photographs extensively during the 1980s and received international acclaim for her work in the town of Juchitán, Oaxaca, where Iturbide photographed the community’s marketplace and scenes of domestic-life, both of which were dominated by women. Iturbide continued photographing indigenous rituals and activities of daily life, but refused to approach her work as an outsider, choosing instead to visit and interact with the communities in which she worked. She also felt that it was important to represent these cultures without trying to idealize or romanticize their connection to the past. Her images often depict startling juxtapositions of traditional Mexican folk-life with elements of contemporary culture. Through her photo essays, Iturbide has documented and preserved a transitional moment in the history of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, whose communities are still enriched by their traditional cultures.